"Our sewing is all behindhand, and neither mother nor I have anything fit to put on, but if you will devise, fit, and cut out, and we all sit at work together, I think a week will see us through the worst of it."
"It just happens that I'm free next week, and I'll come gladly—as a friend, you understand; exchange is no robbery. Think of all you do for Eva," and Mrs. Kenyon's head lifted with the odd little gesture that Betty was beginning to interpret as a sign that her decision on any subject was final. Neither did Betty try at the present time to combat it.
But she was not pleased about it.
"She's too poor to afford to be so independent, mother," she said, when she went home.
"My dear, let her have her way. We can make it up to her in many forms, which she will not detect. Meanwhile one respects that passionate desire for independence."
"Do you? Carried too far I think it becomes almost a vice. It blocks real friendship. I should like to know Mrs. Kenyon's story. I'm sure she has one."
"When she wishes you to know it she will tell you," said Betty's mother placidly.
The children meanwhile did everything together, or to speak more accurately, whatever Jack did, Eva, his faithful satellite, tried to copy. Happiest of all was she when, tired with play, Jack would sit and tell her stories in which his father played ever a prominent part, and his title in these stories was always "Father Jack, the Giant Killer," a name which Eva received with bursts of laughter.
"I shan't tell you any more if you laugh like that," said Jack one day.
Eva stuffed the corner of her pinafore into her mouth to stay her unseemly merriment.